Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter said March’s record building permit number shows the local economy is succeeding.
Porter said the record-breaking $16.3 million partly due to construction picking up in the spring. Though many areas nationwide experiencing economic concerns, Porter said the Upper Cumberland continues to buck the trend.
“Our sales tax dollars have still been coming in really good,” Porter said. “Construction permits as you can see were continuing to be issued and folks are building. We haven’t really seen any slowdown so far in our area which is a good thing.”
Porter said the recent expansion news of Home Depot and Target shows the outside belief in this region.
“We’ve become the retail hub for the region where you get all the surrounding counties to come in here to shop and eat and use our regional medical center and so forth,” Porter said. “So we are hoping that it continues good, of course, there is now to predict a downturn and when it might happen but as of right now everything seems to be steady.”
Porter said March exceeded the previous record which was set in June 2020 after an EF4 tornado. Porter said out of the 54 building permits issued, 40 were for new single-family homes.
“Normally in each month, we range anywhere from 15-25 new homes but March was large,” Porter said. “So hopefully that’s gonna help some of the shortage that we have in the single-family homes in the county.”
Porter said the county rarely sees commercial building permits. However, Porter said in March one of the permits was $4.8 million for a storage facility on Old Baxter Road.
